I only saw it much later after the release, and probably on cable. I liked the audio drama Sticks by ZDS very much, though. It was awesome. As for the hysteria around WoW, I guess Concrete, Wash., went a little extra crazy. It happened in pockets.

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We live on a placid Rhode Island and Providence Plantations of ignorance in the midst of the black seas of an infinity of dark foreigners, and it was not meant that we should voyage too far.

After reading "Out of the Aeons" - I was reminded of a short story I read a long time ago - "The Testament of Magdalen Blair" by Aleister Crowley. Its very Lovecraftian IMHO - and deals with that trapped in the brain problem - it is disturbing and who knows - it might just be worth a Google

I'm reading "Storm Front" by Jim Butcher (the first in the "Dresden Files" series).

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"I never ask a man what his business is, for it never interests me. What I ask him about are his thoughts and dreams." H.P. Lovecraft - In a letter to Maurice W. Moe, January 1929----We are the Borgcraft. Your knowledge will be correlated. Insanity is inevitable.

I'm reading "Storm Front" by Jim Butcher (the first in the "Dresden Files" series).

Damn good series. Stick with the books. When you go back and read them over, you will see a really good example of an author allowing his character to grow and change. I've got them all on audio and kind of fall back on listening to them when I don't have anything else, and I've spotted one or two examples of when Dresden was actually allowed to get too cocky and be beaten down for it, then bounce back a bit later on and learn from his screw ups. very cool.

Bob

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If someone ever dares you to read the Necronomicon out loud... just say no.

I enjoyed the Dresden Files series, though lost track a bit after the 5th or 6th. They also made a TV show which was pretty good too, but I thnk it only ran for one season

Yeah, I liked the TV show. I recently watched them all on Hulu. It's a shame it only ran for one season.

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"I never ask a man what his business is, for it never interests me. What I ask him about are his thoughts and dreams." H.P. Lovecraft - In a letter to Maurice W. Moe, January 1929----We are the Borgcraft. Your knowledge will be correlated. Insanity is inevitable.

My union had a `holdarity forever` mixer, and a brother brought a couple of boxes of books to give away that was given to him by a friend. His friend was a trotskyist, so a lot of it was boring non-fiction social theory and junk like that. I was lucky enough to pick up the book that I am currently reading, a biography of union song-writer Joe Hill (can’t remember the author of it at the moment). It is such a cool pickup, it is an English novelization of a Swedish film, it’s terribly and deliciously pulpy, focusing more on the `wild west' nature of the labour movement in the early 1900s then his Joe Hills life or politics.

I also picked out a nice, hard cover version of Man and Socialism in Cuba by Ernesto `che` Guevara. I can understand why che is such a symbol for idealistic young folks, as allot of the piece has a idealistic vision; unfortunately, it's betrayed by the reality of the regime he helped build (and even within the essay he puts forth some authoritarian arguments).

Finally I got Songs of a Sourdough by Robert W. Service. Haven't read it yet, plan to. Remember the poems "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee" from childhood.

I actually have no problem with Crichton, my jab about him ripping off Carnosaur being somewhat tongue in cheek. There is no evidence that Crichton had ever even heard of Knight's novel when he started working on Jurassic Park in the late 80s. Also the two novels are actually pretty different when you read them with Carnosaur being a much more pulp treatment of the subject matter than Crichton's decidedly serious take.

Admittedly the only two Crichton novels I've ever read are Jurassic Park and The Lost World so I don't feel that I can adequately judge his merit as a writer. I do however love both Jurassic Park novels.

Michael Crichton is a scientific genius and a great writer, don't listen to the naysayers. nor to those who joke about an accomplished man's cancer diagnosis and untimely death. read all his other stuff, it's excellent and all extremely scientific in basis, starting with The Andromeda Strain. after all that you'll forgive him "ER," which I guess gave him more financial freedom to continue writing great stories.

and Crichton is 100% correct that global warming as it is known is a total fraud and is completely made-up. his excellent speech to The Commonwealth Club of San Francisco on this subject is a fascinating read (easily googled) which systematically, logically and factually lays bare the pseudo-intellectual idiocy that foments this global warming hoax and the other environmentalist and Luddite nonsense we are constantly fed about going back to nature and such hogwash. it's one of the smartest analyses of our current human societal plight that I've ever read.

I'm sure that all the leftist elites at The Commonwealth Club were aghast at the truth being hurled unexpectedly at them that night.

Stephen Donaldson "The second chronicles of Thomas Covenant - the unbeliever" for the second time within a year.Almost too good to be fantasy. No boring "young povertysticken-boy-who-is really-the saviour-of.the-world" bullshit. No cute talking dragons. No benevolent elves. No wizards.

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I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you can not put downe; by the Which I meane, Any that can in Turne call up somewhat against you, whereby your Powerfullest Devices may not be of use. Ask of the Lesser, lest the Greater shall not wish to Answer, and shall commande more than you.

I actually have no problem with Crichton, my jab about him ripping off Carnosaur being somewhat tongue in cheek. There is no evidence that Crichton had ever even heard of Knight's novel when he started working on Jurassic Park in the late 80s. Also the two novels are actually pretty different when you read them with Carnosaur being a much more pulp treatment of the subject matter than Crichton's decidedly serious take.

Admittedly the only two Crichton novels I've ever read are Jurassic Park and The Lost World so I don't feel that I can adequately judge his merit as a writer. I do however love both Jurassic Park novels.

Michael Crichton is a scientific genius and a great writer, don't listen to the naysayers. nor to those who joke about an accomplished man's cancer diagnosis and untimely death. read all his other stuff, it's excellent and all extremely scientific in basis, starting with The Andromeda Strain. after all that you'll forgive him "ER," which I guess gave him more financial freedom to continue writing great stories.

and Crichton is 100% correct that global warming as it is known is a total fraud and is completely made-up. his excellent speech to The Commonwealth Club of San Francisco on this subject is a fascinating read (easily googled) which systematically, logically and factually lays bare the pseudo-intellectual idiocy that foments this global warming hoax and the other environmentalist and Luddite nonsense we are constantly fed about going back to nature and such hogwash. it's one of the smartest analyses of our current human societal plight that I've ever read.

I'm sure that all the leftist elites at The Commonwealth Club were aghast at the truth being hurled unexpectedly at them that night.

I think it's funny that you are engaging in the exact behaviour that Crichton is criticizing. Specifically, you are making a 'religion' of the environment, or at least 'anti-envriomentalism'. As he says "First, we need an environmental movement, and such a movement is not very effective if it is conducted as a religion...Environmentalism needs to be absolutely based in objective and verifiable science, it needs to be rational, and it needs to be flexible. And it needs to be apolitical. " By talking about 'leftists' and going on about 'hoaxs' you are creating the political Apostate religion without any basis of rational or verifiable scientific evidence.

Why would someone need such an apostate religion? Because the rational, verifiable scientific evidence is on the side of aggregate global warming. The question is weather or not such global climate change is Anthropocentric or not. Much evidence suggests that it is, although there is still debate within the scientific community that studies such things.

Crichtons speech isn't a take-down of global warming. He only discusses what he sees as the philosophical underpinnings of the environmental movement, without actually taking any look at any of the hard data that says that yes, the world is getting warmer, and yes, humans may have some role to play within that.

Mostly I wouldn't suggest it, but I think it may be good to declare this a 'no politics zone' to avoid flame wars and stick to books.

Mostly I wouldn't suggest it, but I think it may be good to declare this a 'no politics zone' to avoid flame wars and stick to books.

I'm in agreement with TransconaSlim, the Hppodcraft forum has done a great job over the past few years in self moderating itself in terms of political and religious topics of debate, this is not the forum for such debate, people are free to PM each other if they wish to debate one another. I believe the vast majority of us are not interested in political/religious debate (on this particular site anyway).

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'Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.'

I think I have to throw my hat in with Catamount on this one, gentlemen. Let us keep things, if not peaceful, then at least respectful. Start a PM dialogue about your views if it looks like something that might get out of hand, and discuss the topic there.

Bob

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If someone ever dares you to read the Necronomicon out loud... just say no.

I recently read Ship Breaker by Paulo Bacigalupi and I'm just starting The Windup Girl by the same author. He seems to be slightly young adult, though that impression may have been particular to Ship Breaker because this second novel already feels like more mature writing. Either way the stories are engaging and he's got some very interesting concepts for bleak, partially dystopian future societies.

Party poopers! It's hardly a flame war if he's quoting from a post from Feb of 2011, is it? More like subtle signs of underground life. Or am I wrong? Good to see a little controversy now and again.

I can't remember why but I was looking for a certain speech made to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco once. Iirc their website disguises Mp3s you can freely download inside little RealMedia files.

What I've heard Crichton say about AGW is true as far as I can tell. He stirred some controversy with Fear I guess (I've never read it) especially at the BBC, which was full-bore pushing Global Warming Oh Noes! for years and years, and still tries to cling to it.

For whatever reason Crichton was never considered a "real" SF writer even years and years ago when Andromeda Strain was out. They had to sell the paperback by making large mention of the motion picture. It all strikes me as funny because SF isn't real anyway, it's fantasy (yes, I know the difference between the fantasy and SF genres, or at least I think I do). If Crichton was somehow too commercial, that probably means the writers who thought so weren't selling a lot. Bradbury, Ellison, maybe even Heinlein, they don't get accused of being commercial successes and thus poor writers (although Bradbury never seems to have graduated from the pulp mentality imho, God bless him).

On the subject of global warming being caused by humans producing carbon dioxide, I liked what Freeman Dyson wrote--er actually he said it, but it was included in a book of his speeches--about it. He said something about how the logical place to try to measure that would be in the soil, although I forget why exactly now. Something about nematodes or biomass or something. Since no one was really interested in measuring it, AGW is apocryphal. Dyson has written some outstanding stuff, btw. His book Disturbing the Universe was very interesting. I think he or his son also wrote Starship and the Canoe which has a few things to say about ecology as well. He was a nuclear scientist brought over from England for the Manhattan Project (knew Teller and many others personally) who stuck around in the US and went on to Princeton's Advanced Institute something or other. His son moved to Vancouver Island to live like a native or something of that nature, and began designing canoes. Dyson the elder is known for the Dyson Starship design. His son studies native canoes, kayaks and baidarkas and came up with some ideas about design and navigation. His daughter became some sort of internet mogul, or she was before the dot com bubble burst, or she was some sort of opinion leader or something. I shouldn't use the past tense, afaik they're all still with us.

The last book I cracked open (I've only read part of the intro so far) is Mark Forsyth's Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language. It looks like great fun.

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We live on a placid Rhode Island and Providence Plantations of ignorance in the midst of the black seas of an infinity of dark foreigners, and it was not meant that we should voyage too far.